Recent Comments

Grey: @some asshole Games don't need to be art. However, the interactive medium as a whole possesses completely untapped potential. There is no artistic need for read more

That Fuzzy Bastard: Just posted this on Blow's blog, but thought it might be of interest to people here too... Okay, this is a huge pet peeve of read more

some asshole: And Blow is only getting this now? Did he have to make Braid to realize this? How about we all get off the whole "omg read more

About GameSetWatch

GameSetWatch.com is the alt.video game weblog and sister site of Gamasutra.com. It is dedicated to collecting curious links and media for offbeat and oft-ignored games from consoles old and new, as well as from the digital download, iOS, and indie spaces.

[We're finishing up our selected highlights of Gamasutra's Montreal Games Summit coverage with this Mathew Kumar-penned summary of an interesting and important Jon Blow keynote on games and their intent.]

As the closing keynote of the 2008 Montreal Games Summit, independent game developer and thinker Jonathan Blow, previously a Game Developer magazine columnist and an IGF winner for his time-bending title Braid, offered a striking deconstruction of a major video game conceit: that they can offer profound experiences through traditional storytelling forms.

Blow argued that, in fact, the interactivity of gameplay -- and its requirements of "fun" and "challenge" among others -- is in fact directly contradictory to such a goal.

In Blow's introduction, he said that his goal as a developer has always been to try and "figure out how to make games that touch people and make them feel something real."

While the question of how to do that was "too big a question" for him to deal with in a mere hour, he explained that his talk at MIGS was aimed at exploring the things that video game developers and games themselves do to make that quest harder.

"As an industry, we have adopted practices that make things fake, unimportant and careless," he declared, arguing that these were all the antithesis to creating profundity.

Yet games actually have an advantage over other media in attempting to impart importance, in that there are two ways of doing so: one, through expressing it to the player, and the other through the player discovering it via their own activity -- and Blow concluded that games largely fell into one camp or the other.

Metal Gear Solid, for example, expresses its meaning to the player, while in something like Pac-Man, the meaning lies in the activity. According to Blow, games that attempt to impart meaning through story are inherently conflicted -- since gameplay structures that render stories fake or unimportant are so "deeply ingrained."

Though he felt that this was largely a single problem, he split his argument up into three sections in order to explore the different facets of the problem.

Conflict One: Story Meaning vs. Dynamic Meaning

To Blow, "art" games such as The Marriage and Gravitation are interesting because they communicate their themes through the player's behavior within the game design and the cues from the visuals.

The Marriage, created by EA's The Sims Studio head Rod Humble, for example, initially looks completely abstract -- but as the player decodes what the game mechanics are, they are also learning the meaning of those mechanics.

The "more accessible" Gravitation instead offers a limited number of quickly-grasped mechanics that can create a number of interesting situations that are open to interpretation.

"If you haven't played this game, please leave the lecture and play it right now," Blow urged.

Gravitation is a key example of the conflict between meaning and play, Blow said. The more additions and features a designer adds to make the game more "fun" and more "exciting", the more the meaning of the game becomes obscured and easier to misinterpret.

If, in one interpretation of Gravitation as it currently stands the concept of collecting stars to become ice blocks is a representation of ideas turning into concrete projects, for example, what would it mean if you added dots to collect? Would that represent when you clean up your house rather than working?

"The fact is, in the games industry we're not used to thinking about the interpretations, and actually, we make jokes about it," Blow said. "'Pac-Man is about taking drugs and going on a rampage' -- But that's a completely valid interpretation."

"In games, interpretation extends past the visual art -- the dynamic system communicates something to the player, whether that is intentional or not."

Admittedly, though Gravitation uses its dynamic meaning, it does not tell a story, whereas most designers aim so directly to create something fun that they forget the importance of the dynamic meaning -- a problem Blow argued other media "do not have."

"If a director is creating a film where a beloved character dies, he doesn't put happy circus music over the funeral scene just because it's more fun. If you were David Lynch, you might put it in to unsettle the viewer, but that's something else entirely."

"In the games industry, we put happy circus music over every one of our funerals," Blow continued. To flesh this declaration, he drew on several recent examples. He called BioShock's little sisters an example of a "supposed dilemma," one undone by an interest in game balance.

"This supposed moral quandary might have worked well in the marketing campaign, but will that stand up as a profound moment in video games in forty years? If it is, I hope I have nothing to do with games when we reach that point."

Other examples included Grand Theft Auto 4 making a story-critical character functionally useless (requiring large effort from the player with no reward) and Half-Life 2's attempts to make you form a relationship with Alyx while at the same time your intention is to keep progressing through the game.

"Alyx can't be talking to you while you're in the middle of a firefight or solving puzzles, so it's in the quiet moments between, when you're trying to get to the next section, that she plays the role of the 'character who has to unlock the door that will get you to the next arena'." said Blow.

"Of course, they want you to form a relationship with her, so she can't just unlock it, she has to be like, 'Aw man, this door is jammed. Anyway, did you hear that Dr. Kleiner just got a new girlfriend?' and all you can think is 'Shut up and get the door open so I can get to where I want to go.'"

In Blow's mind, these kind of conflicts are always going to exist -- alternatives are hard to conceptualize, such as AAA titles that offer themes, moods and "interesting mental stuff" without story; pointless, by removing all dynamic meaning (in which case "why bother making a game?"); or unfeasible, such as managing dynamic meaning to precisely match story, which would be as hard as "pressing bubbles out of wallpaper."

Conflict Two: Challenge vs. Progression

Even if it were possible to reconcile dynamic meaning with story, Blow suggested that it still couldn't be enough to make true profundity possible.

"For a story to be interesting, it has to occur from scene to scene in a linear and direct fashion," Blow said -- but, he added, the industry "does not know how to make games that don't challenge the player."

Challenge is the easiest way to communicate, however subconsciously, that the player's interaction is meaningful. Yet at the same time, challenge works as a "friction" against the progression of the story -- so no matter what, a story in a challenging game is structurally unsound.

Blow admitted certain studios have figured this out, and now offer a "dramatic presentation of non-difficulty," where the player feels as though they're in danger but aren't, and dynamic difficulty adjustment, where the bar will be continually lowered until they can walk over it.

Yet, no matter how hard they might try, "friction" must always still exist, because for there to be a portrayed value to the difficulty, there must be at least some, or else players will lose their suspension of disbelief in the game's value system.

From this, Blow felt that "faux challenge" was "unlikely to impact someone deeply or change their life," because it was by its very nature fake, which is (at least to Blow) directly contradictory to depth.

Alternatively, though it does little to help story as a form within games, Blow emphasized that challenge was, in fact, "very precious," as unlike other forms, games could offer this challenge in a direct fashion.

"It is our domain and we ought to understand that," he said, "because if we want to hold our place alongside other arts, we need to play to our strengths."

Conflict Three: Interactivity vs. Pre-Baked Delivery

As every comedian knows, timing is everything. A bad comedian can get booed off the stage, while a good one can receive a standing ovation for an identical set of jokes -- simply due to their method of delivery.

"Games sabotage the timing of their delivery," Blow said of game stories. "In a game, you cannot control where the player does, what he just did or what he'll do next; you can't pre-bake that."

"Chekov argued that if you introduce an idea, like a gun, into a story, you have to use it by the end," said Blow. "The idea is the economy of audience attention. If you put a gun on stage because you thought, 'Oh, I want this place to seem 'Old Westy,' then some people are going to sit there thinking, 'what's the deal with that gun?'"

The core concept of "Chekov's Gun" also has its positive aspects -- the potential for foreshadowing and justification -- but in a game, it is difficult, if not impossible, to manage that within the dynamic meaning.

"Some people say that if we ever have good enough AI to manage the stories we'll be fine. I don't believe that, because managing a problem like Chekov's Gun would require human-level AI to create what would be little more than a stage manager, and a stage manager is nothing without the human-written, pre-baked story."

"Dynamic stories are pretend stories, poorly structured, poorly delivered and they will always be an awkward second fiddle to linear medium," concluded Blow.

"I may have come across all 'anti-story', and I personally would like to see if we can make games offer something without them, but I still don't know how to scale up Gravitation to something to MGS4 size," Blow said.

He concluded: "Perhaps the problem is that we so deeply rely on reference points like film, which require stories progressing over time, when we could be referring to things like sculpture or painting, which require no timescale and people find just as moving."

(UPDATE: Jonathan Blow noted in the comments to this article that he has made the audio and slides of his MIGS talk available on the Braid website's blog.)

3 Comments

And Blow is only getting this now? Did he have to make Braid to realize this? How about we all get off the whole "omg we have to make art and meaningfulness" and just make good fun games?

I can't imagine a single person who reads this comment never had a game that affected them on a deep or personal level. Why do we have to struggle so hard to figure it out? This whole games as art movement have brought in all of the pretentious ignorance of the art world with none of the weight and importance. We've gained nothing but prophets like Blow who constantly eschew about how all commercial games are bad, but indie is good.

Think about it this way: games have been around for far longer than movies or books. Games have been with us since the dawn of human civilization. They're an important aspect of humanity and they never had to be officially recognized as art to be considered so highly. No one's going to put chess in the Louvre, but it's still cherished and renowned. Soccer isn't considered art, but it's more beloved and respected than all the paintings that ever where and ever will be.

I think, because the nature of video games allows for storytelling we've confused it for needing to tell a story. A game with excellent story but bad gameplay will always be bad, but a game with excellent gameplay and a crappy story, or even no story at all will always be enjoyed.

We can have stories, we've had them for decades, and wonderful, enjoyable and engaging stories. But do we have to bend over backwards trying to figure out how to use them while listening to snobbish (though, not in this article) indie guys like Jon?

How about we focus on games as a learning tool as Blow suggests? And not worry about story. If we can make a great story that compliments the gameplay well that's fine, and if not we can have a story for treating the player. Something extra to enjoy for overcoming a challenge after the player treats themselves for accomplishing a challenging goal.

Do we NEED to be art?
Do we need to be art when being games is just fine?
Or are we struggling to prove ourselves, to prove we aren't useless because we feel we're in the minority, when in fact we've become the vast majority? Do we have to prove Roger Ebert wrong? What are we so insecure about? That's what we should be focusing on more, I think. Perhaps we're confusing games with simulation, since the two compliment each other so much. A simulation can have a story, but the rules are merely there to recreate an experience, not provide a challenge which does work against a story.

A game is nothing more than rules and a goal. Video games just have more rules and more goals, but deep down they're no different than a game of tag. We could dig deep to try and create a dialogue about the human condition through the medium of tag, but why?

Just posted this on Blow's blog, but thought it might be of interest to people here too...

Okay, this is a huge pet peeve of mine—”Chekhov’s Gun” is the most misinterpreted quote in all of literature!

The original source is a letter Chekhov wrote to his wife while he was in Moscow, in which he mentions: “I’ve been seeing a lot of bad, boring plays—you know the sort, the kind where, if a gun is introduced in the first act, it must go off in the last.”

He was probably referring to Ibsen’s “Hedda Gabler”, a hugely popular play at the time, which features the most portentous gun of the 19th century. It’s introduced ominously in the first act and, sure enough, it melodramatically resolves the plot at the end.

And he was saying that this was what made for *bad* writing, not laying down a maxim!

But don’t just take my word for it—look at Chekhov’s last play, “The Cherry Orchard”, in which not one, but two guns are introduced with great portent… and neither is ever fired, or ever heard from again. They’re just dots in his pointillist painting, with no obligation to lead to anything other than a general mood.

This misinterpretation of Chekhov’s gun is relatively trivial on its own, but suggests a larger blind spot in your conception of narrative: the huge role of atmosphere and theme in storytelling, elements which Anton Chekhov, or Robert Altman, or Andrei Tarkovsky would happily tell you are more important than a mere plot.

Take, for example, your bete noir of The Little Sisters of Bioshock. It’s true that they’re not actually that impactful in how you move through the story (for reasons, as you accurately note, of game balance). They are, however, hugely important for setting a mood of corrupted innocence, and for introducing, though your interaction with them, the themes of selfishness versus altruism.

Again, the story qua story—what happened to Ryan, and Fontaine, and Tennenbaum, and you—is, like all stories, imaginary, and therefore trivial, a bunch of paper dolls being put through the paces. But the mood and the themes are the whole point of the enterprise, and for those, the Little Sisters are crucial.

@some asshole
Games don't need to be art.
However, the interactive medium as a whole possesses completely untapped potential.
There is no artistic need for rules or games in that realm. Art belongs there.

@That Fuzzy Bastard
Now here's a man that knows what he's talking about. Bioshock isn't art, far from it in fact, and the Little Sisters can be twisted into that atmospheric mould, even though they've been shallow gameplay mechanics since inception, but your approach is the correct one.

Blow has so many good ideas though. He seems to understand so much. That's until, of course, in straying "away" from films, he moves closer towards it.

Forget sculpture or painting - interactivity is closest to cinema and comparisons are inevitable. The only issue is what to "imitate" or rather, translate into the interactive medium. It's Tarkovsky and it's Bresson, not "Schindler's List" or "Deep, Symbolic Film #45."